


Stitches

by AvaBlook



Category: Hello Puppets (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amputation, Angst, Body Horror, Body Modification, College, First Aid, Gen, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Nonbinary Character, Nonbinary Scout (Hello Puppets!), Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Stitches, off-screen body modification
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-28
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:47:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 11,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22945006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AvaBlook/pseuds/AvaBlook
Summary: The Host and Scout both manage to escape Handeemen HQ, if only by the skin of their teeth. Then comes the really hard part: figuring out how to keep moving forward. The outside world isn’t exactly prepared for the existence of sentient puppets, after all. But whatever they do, they’re doing it together.The Host/the protagonist is a he/him dude named Adam and Scout is they/them nonbinary in this fic.
Comments: 92
Kudos: 219





	1. Keeping it Together

The race through the tunnels had been terrifying. Rosco was hot on his heels, he had no idea which direction to go, the dark tunnels seemed to twist on forever: it was all awful. Not as bad, though, as the moment when Scout got caught in the door closing machine.

“Host! Pull me out, pull me out!” Scout sounded even more panicked than they had when they’d been trapped in the confetti machine, and Adam hurried to get a grip with his free hand and _pull_. Scout came free, but… there was the sound of tearing fabric, and Scout _screamed_.

Adam quickly stepped back from the machine, not wanting to risk another accident, and Scout got their bearings.

“Shi- oh shit, oh God,” Scout said, and Adam turned to look. Scout’s entire right arm was just… gone. Torn off by the machine entirely.

“Host, be honest with me; does it look bad?” Scout asked. Scout’s shirt sleeve concealed the wound itself, but their entire arm had been ripped off; no way that was _good_ . Adam nodded his head _yes_.

“Yeah,” Scout coughed. “Hey, just FYI, when people say ‘be honest’, they don’t actually mean that.”

Scout coughed again, a rough and dry sound, and a couple tufts of cotton filling fell out of their wounded arm and drifted to the floor. Adam looked at Scout, hoping that he was somehow able to convey a _you okay?_ without words, and with a bag over his head. It was a long shot, but Scout seemed to get what he was going for, at least.

“It’s fine, I’m fine,” they said. “Let’s just… go.”

And yeah, with Rosco still lurking outside the mostly-shut door, trying to claw his way through the door with a paw that was actually a human foot, getting out of there seemed like a pretty good idea to Adam. If they waited here for the dog puppet to get them, they were as good as dead anyway.

It didn’t mean he was going to accept that Scout was fine, though. The stuffing that was falling out of their torn arm as Adam walked out of the room wasn’t making him feel any better, either. Sure, for a normal, non-voodooed-to-life puppet, getting a limb torn off may not be a big deal, but the puppets here were closer to humans than to the stuffed things Adam was familiar with. He’d sure never seen a puppet with organs anywhere else, at least.

There was another door with a scanner pad at the other end of the room, which Scout opened, and then closed behind them; the other door seemed to be holding Rosco back for now, but there was no point in tempting fate. 

The halls on the other side of the door were dark, with Scout’s built-in light the only thing keeping them from pitch blackness. Adam held Scout up to the walls, checking for more painted arrows, some clue which way to go.

There were no more graffitied messages, but there was a metal sign fastened to the wall. A sign that said _Exit to Street Level._

Adam turned in the direction the sign pointed without a second thought, rushing forward as fast as he dared to in the faint light from Scout.

“Is that a light up there?” Scout asked. Adam squinted, as the fabric of the bag over his head made it hard to see very far, but it looked like it, yes, a faint pinprick of daylight ahead! Even now, the ground beneath his feet was sloping upwards, taking them back to civilization!

“I think we’re getting out!” Scout said enthusiastically, only to almost immediately dissolve into a coughing fit.

“Shit…” they muttered, followed by another burst of dry, painful coughs.

The cotton was falling from Scout’s arm in clumps now. That couldn’t be good. _Okay, shit shit shit._ What did you do for a human who had their arm torn off? Stop the bleeding and call an ambulance? Yeah, that didn’t really apply here. Scout was leaking a lot of stuffing, which was probably close enough to blood for puppets, but applying pressure wasn’t really going to make that better. He was pretty sure fabric and stuffing didn’t clot over and heal like flesh and blood, even for living voodoo puppets. What was he supposed to do, then? 

He had to sew up the wound. Fast, before Scout lost any more stuffing. Simple enough in theory, but decidedly more difficult in practice. Where the hell was he supposed to find a needle in a place like this? He didn’t even recall seeing any in the sewing room. 

_Okay, Adam, think_. He paused on his climb up to street level, internally wincing as a few more clumps of cotton fell from Scout’s arm. 

“Host? What are you doing? Don’t wait for me,” Scout said. 

It wasn’t exactly like he could answer them, what with his mouth being sewn shut and all. Instead, he looked around the ramp he was on, desperately looking for something to sew with. There was some scattered detritus from the studio, mostly discarded portraits of the characters, but underneath a picture of Nick Nack was a familiar med kit, the kind that had been hung on the walls all around the building. Adam had never had cause to open one of them before, but there was no time like the present. He pulled the white plastic case forward and clumsily flipped it open with his free hand. 

Inside the med kit were band-aids, cotton gauze, a few bottles of pills, and _yes_ , a sterile needle! There was a spool of thread for stitches alongside it, but with only one free hand, Adam couldn’t get the end of it loose. 

He turned his attention from the spool to a loose thread hanging off the end of his shirt. He’d been fussing with it for most of the day prior to coming to Handeemen HQ, but he’d never gotten around to cutting it off, thank God. Adam grabbed the loose thread and gave it a solid tug, unraveling the stitching at the bottom of his shirt and freeing a length of several inches of thread. He tugged again, loosening more thread, and then snapped it off. 

Threading a needle with one hand was tricky, but Scout was in no position to hold anything at the moment. Adam sat down on the ground and carefully pressed the needle between his knees with the hole pointing upwards. He used his free hand to thread the loose thread through the needle.

Okay, here came the hard part. Adam knew how to sew well enough, but sewing with only one hand, on a living being, wasn’t exactly the same as sewing patches onto a backpack. Worst of all, there was no way either him or Scout could tie a knot right now, so he couldn’t pull the thread tight enough for it to slip all the way through the fabric, but he still needed it tight enough to close the wound. 

There were so many ways this could go wrong, but every second he spent hesitating was a second Scout’s condition was getting worse. 

_Here goes nothing._

“Ow! What the hell, I already got my arm ripped off, now you’re stabbing me?” Scout said. 

Again, mouth sewn shut. Not really any way for him to answer, was there? Adam made the next couple stitches quickly, hoping Scout would get his point.

“Wait, are you… sewing me up?” Scout asked, and Adam nodded. 

The one thing Adam had going for him in this situation was that Scout’s arm was fairly small. With just a couple dozen stitches, Adam had managed to close up the torn fabric, pulling it shut over the loose stuffing and fabric organs beginning to peek out from inside. It wasn’t a tidy or clean job, by any means: the stitches were rough and uneven, and several inches of loose string dangled from either end, but it was functional.

“Wait, did that actually _work_?” Scout asked. They moved the stump of their arm experimentally, and no more stuffing fell out. “I still feel pretty rough, but… a bit less like I’m falling apart at the seams.”

Adam breathed a sigh of relief. Scout was the only reason he was still alive at this point, and he had to admit he’d grown somewhat attached to them, in more than the literal sense. The idea of him making it out and Scout _not…_ yeah, that wasn’t happening if he had anything to say about it.

Well, _do_ about it. His mouth was still sewn shut, so no saying anything for him for the time being. 

Now it looked like that might not be true for much longer, though. 

“You ready to get out of here?” Scout asked. Adam nodded and pushed himself back to his feet. The climb ahead to get back to street level looked long and tedious, but considering what was behind them, it was a welcome sight. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think this is like the second fic for Hello Puppets! on AO3, which is crazy! Why aren't more people going wild about this good good game?  
> Let me know if you're interested in seeing more, I may continue this story at some point. Thanks for reading!


	2. A New Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adam and Scout get the hell out of Handeemen HQ. Adam gets a phone call.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember when I said I *might* continue this?  
> Well, here we are. Turns out I have lots of ideas for this. Expect at least 2-3 more chapters but maybe not as quickly as this one

After spending so long in the dimly-lit halls of Handeemen HQ, the sunlight of the world above was almost blinding. For once, Adam was glad for the sack tied over his head, which dampened the light to a more manageable level. Scout, who had no such luck, resorted to squinting and holding their remaining arm up to shield their eyes.

“Ugh, is it always so _bright_ out here?” they asked. That was a bit tricky to answer; a bright and sunny day wasn’t exactly _rare_ , but there were cloudy and rainy days too, not to mention nights… Adam settled for nodding _yes_. He could always explain in more detail later, once his mouth wasn’t sewn shut.

As his eyes adjusted to the light, Adam started making sense of where they’d emerged. Thankfully, it was an area he recognized, because he’d passed it on the way to Handeemen HQ. They were a few blocks away from the building now, an easy walk back.

Of course, the _last_ thing Adam wanted to do right now was walk right back towards the hellish place he and Scout had _just_ barely escaped, but his car was still parked in the lot, and he didn’t exactly want to walk the seventeen miles back to campus on foot, either. He just hoped that Mortimer’s promise of a clean getaway had been good, that the puppets wouldn’t try to take them again.

Scout was quiet as Adam started the walk back, seemingly content to just look at the world around them and let Adam lead. That changed when the half-burnt sign for the Handeemen HQ building came into sight.

“Are you _crazy?_ ” Scout demanded. “We only _just_ got out of there, and you want to go _back?_ ”

Adam shook his head furiously, but that didn’t do much to ease Scout’s panicked shouts. He wished he could explain in greater detail, but again, _mouth sewn shut._ Being unable to talk was really getting old.

In place of words, he pulled his car keys from his pocket and jingled them around. Turns out, when you expect your kidnappee to become a brainless slave to a sentient puppet, you don’t bother emptying out their pockets. Adam hadn’t been carrying much to begin with, just his keys and a pad of paper for notes (which had gone unused, because he was pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to forget what had happened even if he tried to), but it was a relief that he at least hadn’t lost them. 

“Yay, more keys,” Scout deadpanned. Apparently, they didn’t recognize them at all. It made enough sense—there was only so much a few hours of cable TV could teach you, after all—but Adam had now completely exhausted the communication options available to him.

Thankfully, at this point they’d reached the lot where Adam had parked. He quickly unlocked his car, slipped into the driver’s seat, and locked the door behind him. And then, because there was no sense taking chances, he put the car into drive and peeled out of the lot, maneuvering the steering wheel with his free hand while Scout shouted and braced themself against the ceiling.

Adam drove a few blocks away before pulling into another empty parking lot and parking the car again. The bag still secured over his head wasn’t exactly doing his vision any favors, and the last thing he needed was to escape Handeemen HQ just to get into a car accident. 

With the car parked, Adam opened the glove compartment and started rifling through it before finally finding a multitool he’d stashed there a while ago.

After a couple tries, he got the main blade of the tool flipped out and set to work cutting through the ropes securing the bag over his head. Thankfully, the rope didn’t seem to be voodooed, and he was able to cut through it easily enough. The rope fell slack around his shoulders, and Adam pulled the sack off his head, taking a deep breath of air not filtered through old fabric. His car smelled like stale fast food and coffee, but fuck, _anything_ was an improvement over the smell of dusty canvas and dried blood.

He was able to see better, now, enough to tell that it was mid-morning out. He’d ventured into Handeemen HQ in the early evening; had he been in there that long? With all the adrenaline pumping through his body, not to mention the lack of windows, it had been hard to keep track of time. 

With the sack removed, Adam flipped down the driver’s seat sunshade, examining his reflection in the little mirror inside. For all that Riley was supposedly methodical, the sewing job she’d done on his mouth looked like it could be the dictionary image for “haphazard”: the stitches were uneven, they backtracked and crossed, and, oh yeah, they were totally covered in now-dried blood. Scout winced sympathetically at the sight of them.

Adam picked up the multitool again and flipped out the scissor attachment. He carefully held the small blades to the thread holding his mouth shut and began cutting.

Given that the blades of a pair of multitool scissors are an inch long and Riley seemed to have used about a billion stitches to sew Adam’s mouth shut, it took a few minutes of careful snipping to cut through all the thread. Adam’s free hand was a bit sore from cutting with the tiny scissors by the time he was done.

Well, done for now. There were still dozens of little bits of thread hanging from his face, but they weren’t actually holding his mouth shut anymore, so he’d count this as a win.

Scout, who had kept quiet the whole time Adam had been cutting the stitches, spoke up.

“Host? You good?”

Adam tried his lips, gently working his jaw to make sure he’d cut through all the stitches, and then spoke. 

“Adam,” he said, his voice hoarse with disuse. “My name’s Adam.”

“Adam, huh? That’s… gonna take some getting used to,” Scout admitted. “Anyway, _Adam_ , are you… okay?”

“I’m fine,” Adam said. “Let’s just… get out of here, okay?”

“Hey, no arguments here,” Scout said.

So, of course, it was at that moment that Adam’s phone decided to ring.

Adam startled, because sudden loud noises had _not_ been a good thing for a little while now, but once he spotted his phone buzzing around on the passenger seat of the car, he calmed down enough to answer it, switching on the speakerphone as he did.

“Hello?” he managed to choke out, his voice still sore from disuse.

“Adam? Where the hell have you been?”

“Cassandra?”

“Who else? I’ve been calling you for the past two days, your article was due an hour ago. What the hell, Adam? I send you out to write a spooky nonsense piece and you disappear off the face of the earth for three fucking days, what the _fuck_ , Adam!”

Which, okay, that was a lot of words right there, so Adam caught on to the one thing that he deemed most important and ran with it. 

“Three days?” he asked.

“ _Y_ _es!_ It’s _Saturday_ _!_ What have you been _doing_ to lose track of time like this?”

“I’ve been running for my life from a bunch of murderous living puppets!” Adam yelled back. 

There was blessed silence on the other end of the line for a moment as Cassandra processed that.

“What the hell?” she finally said. “Adam, this story you came up with had better be fucking fantastic.”

“I don’t _have_ a story, I just got out of that place like twenty minutes ago!” Adam said. 

“Adam! I’ve been counting on this! I have page three saved for it with room for color pictures and everything. Tell me you _at_ _least_ have pictures.”

“I guess I do?” Adam said. He’d been picking up the photographs that the journalist, Anthony Pierson, had left behind, at least. 

“Ugh, are you serious? Whatever, just get into the office _now_ , okay? We go to print in two hours and everyone else’s stuff is already being edited.”

And then, before Adam could argue, Cassandra hung up, leaving Adam’s mind swimming as he tried to process everything she’d said. Apparently he’d been in Handeemen HQ for three days? He was sure he’d been there for a day, at most, more likely just a few hours. It was possible he’d lost track of time while running around solving puzzles, but not _two days’ worth_ of time. How long had he been blacked out while Riley... _worked_ on him? How long had he been fighting Mortimer’s control in his own mind before Scout had woken him up?

Well, the answer was apparently two days, give or take, but knowing that didn’t exactly make Adam any less uneasy.

“Who _was_ that?” Scout asked.

“Cassandra, my editor at the school paper,” Adam said.

“Well, she sounds like a bitch,” Scout said.

“She always gets like this around deadlines,” Adam said. “I’ve just never been on the receiving end of it before.”

“I say we ditch her,” Scout said. “Let her come up with her own content for page three or whatever.”

“Tempting, but… she’s the one who sent me to Handeemen HQ in the first place. I think she deserves to know _exactly_ what happened there,” Adam said.

“Wait, she _sent_ you there? Why?”

“Wanted something spooky for the Halloween issue. A story about the homeless people that go missing there or something,” Adam said.

“So she sent you in there _knowing_ that hosts that walk in don’t come out again?” Scout asked. Adam nodded, and Scout glared at the phone still sitting in the passenger seat.

“Well, then, if she wants you in there _right now_ , I say we give her _exactly_ what she’s asking for,” Scout said. “Cursed puppet tagalong and all.”

“Glad we’re on the same page,” Adam said, switching the car into gear. If Cassandra wanted something creepy for her Halloween issue, well, he’d deliver.


	3. Deadlines

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adam and Scout have a talk with Cassandra

The one bright side to it being Saturday was that campus was pretty much deserted. There were no classes and it was still before noon, so the vast majority of the student body were sleeping instead of hanging out on the green. There was no one out and about to give Adam and Scout odd looks as Adam walked from the parking lot to the newspaper office.

Of course, with the deadline to print in less than two hours, the newspaper office itself was bustling.

“Hey, Adam,” one of the copy editors nearest the door, whose name Adam had forgotten at least four times by now but he thought might be called June, greeted him as he walked in. Then she caught sight of Scout and did a double take.

“What’s up with the puppet?” maybe-June asked.

“What, didn’t you hear about the Halloween special Cassandra sent me to write?” Adam asked.

“Well, yeah, but that’s…what, are you like method acting or something?” she asked. 

“Yeah, something like that,” Adam said. “Where’s Cassandra?” A quick glance over the open office of the newspaper’s headquarters showed several copy editors typing furiously on their keyboards, but no sign of the lead editor.

“Interview room,” maybe-June said, pointing towards the closed door to her right. “Be careful, she’s pissed.”

“Yeah, we got an earful already,” Adam said, making his way over to the interview room. Scout waved goodbye over Adam’s shoulder, and Adam heard the copy editor drop something in surprise.

He could deal with that later, though. Right now he was focused on Cassandra.

The newspaper’s “interview room” was a former storage closet with a couple folding chairs and a small table crammed inside, used whenever someone being interviewed wanted a little privacy and nowhere better was available. That Cassandra was waiting for him inside was for the best, Adam figured. He would have gotten into it with her out in the middle of everyone else if he needed to, but none of the other authors or copy editors had been the ones to send him into that Handeemen HQ; they didn’t need to know the gory details.

Just as maybe-June has said, Cassandra was inside the interview room, her laptop balanced on the rickety table inside, typing at a remarkable pace. She was so focused on her work that she didn’t even notice right away when Adam pulled the door open. It took her a second to glance up, at which point she leveled a glare at him that lasted about five seconds before fading into confusion.

“What the hell?” Cassandra asked.

“Hello to you too,” Adam said, pulling the door shut behind him and wedging his way into the second chair in the room.

“Adam, what’s up with that shit on your face? And that puppet?” Cassandra said, sheer confusion winning out over her earlier anger.

“Oh, this is Scout,” Adam said, lifting up the arm that Scout was on. “Scout, this is my editor, Cassandra.”

“You were a total bitch over the phone,” Scout said.

Cassandra looked at Scout for a moment, like she was trying to figure out what was going on, and then leveled a glare at Adam again.

“I said to write an article, Adam, not make a Halloween costume for yourself,” Cassandra said. “The ventriloquism is a nice touch, but really, you better have an article after all or you’re gonna wish you went missing like the homeless guys.”

“Sure, I’ve got a story for you, but you’re gonna have to type it up for me,” Adam said. “I’m pretty much down a hand at the moment.”

“What, with the puppet? Take it off and get to work, then,” Cassandra said, already turning back to her laptop.

“You got scissors?” Adam asked.

“Why?” Cassandra asked.

“For the stitches,” Adam said.

That got Cassandra’s attention. She jerked her head up from her laptop screen, and Adam gestured at the dozens of bloody stitches at the base of Scout’s body, sewing them onto Adam’s arm.

“What. The. Fuck,” Cassandra said. She reached up to pull Adam’s arm closer, but Scout swatted her hand away.

“Ever hear of personal space, lady?” Scout asked. Cassandra startled at that, looking at Scout a lot more intently as the little puppet rolled their eyes and twisted back to face Adam.

“Are all your friends this grabby, H-Adam?” they asked.

“Wait, is that really not you talking?” Cassandra said, looking back and forth between Adam and Scout. “Adam, what the fuck happened?”

“I got kidnapped by a bunch of murderous living puppets, they sewed a less-murderous living puppet onto my arm, tried to kill both of us, nearly succeeded, we managed to escape, and then you called about the paper,” Adam said. He looked down at Scout for confirmation. “How’d I do?”

“Eh, it was passable for a rundown,” Scout said, making a so-so gesture with their remaining hand. “You sure know how to play down the deadly peril, though.”

“If this is some kind of wild prank, you’d better tell me right now or I’ll stick you with police blotter writeups for the rest of the year,” Cassandra threatened.

Adam shook his head, and then remembered he was actually able to talk again.

“Wish it was, but I’m telling the truth,” Adam said.

Cassandra fell back into her chair hard enough that it might have tipped backwards if it wasn’t pressed against the wall. She rubbed her forehead with one hand for a moment, muttering something Adam couldn’t make out, and then sat back up,reaching out for her laptop keyboard.

“Okay,” Cassandra said. “You talk, I’ll type. Now tell me everything.”

* * *

Cassandra’s fingers tapped across the narrow desk as she stared at the screen of her laptop. It had been a few minutes since Adam had stopped talking, and her previous concern about the deadline seemed forgotten as she stared at the newly-written story in deep consideration.

“Adam… I don’t think we can publish this,” she finally said.

“What?” Scout demanded.

“What do you mean we can’t publish it?” Adam asked.

Cassandra sighed.

“Adam… think about this for a second. We’re a college paper. This article is going to run opposite a piece on last-minute sexy Halloween costumes, a horoscope, and an ad for a burrito restaurant. Do you think anyone is really going to believe it? Hell, I’ve got you and Scout right across from me and I’m still half-convinced this is all some fever dream.”

“We’ve got the pictures,” Adam said, gesturing to the stack of Anthony Pierson’s photographs on the desk, the ones he’d taken from Handeemen HQ. 

“They’re good pictures, but let’s face it, they could have been staged,” Cassandra said. “Best case, we publish it as it is, and everyone laughs it off.”

“And worst case?” Adam asked.

“They think it sounds fun. They decide to check out Handeemen HQ themselves, to go looking for these puppets.”

“Riley would have a field day with that,” Scout said.

The air in the interview room hung heavy. Cassandra had a point, Adam knew she did. No one with common sense would go into Handeemen HQ, but _he_ had; with prompting, he could easily see others trying to follow in his footsteps. He doubted any of them would be as lucky as he had, to stay awake and get paired with a sympathetic puppet.

He didn’t want that on his hands.

“So what do we do?” he asked.

“Only thing I can think to do is edit it,” Cassandra said. “It’s too long for the paper as is, anyway; we keep the mangled puppets, and the meat locker, and maybe even the rats, but we take out any mention of Riley, Rosco, Mortimer, the other puppets.”

“So... _lie_ , then,” Scout said. 

“We’d still be telling part of the truth, just… making it seem like any other boring creepypasta,” Cassandra corrected. “Spooky, but nothing special. Nothing worth checking out themselves.”

“Cass… that feels wrong,” Adam said. “At the very least, shouldn’t we warn people?”

“What, _‘don’t go here or else a bunch of living puppets will try to suck out your life force’_?” Cassandra said. “I’m with you, Adam, really, but do you honestly think anyone would take a warning like that seriously?”

“It does sound kind of unbelievable when she says it like that,” Scout admitted. “I’m no expert on the host world, but _that_ sounds like something a crazy person would come up with.”

“You guys are right, I know you are, but… we have to try something, right?” Adam said. 

He couldn’t help thinking back to Anthony Pierson. The other man had stumbled into Handeemen HQ and figured out what was going there a lot better than Adam had managed to. He was a journalist, and not just for a college paper. He had pictures, he had proof, and he’d still been laughed off. He’d become obsessed with the place, with cracking it open, and they’d gotten him. Adam had seen the tattoo on the hand of Mortimer’s host—Anthony was as good as dead. Adam didn’t want to follow in his footsteps.

Adam had Scout, sure, but how convincing was a single puppet going to be in selling a story this crazy? No help at all for a print story, that was sure. Maybe if he went to the police, but approaching them with a story straight out of the paper didn’t seem like a good idea either. 

Ugh, trying to figure this out was giving him a major headache.

“Fine,” Adam said. “Edit it. Cut out whatever you think needs to go.”

Scout looked up at him, apparently worried at the sudden change in his demeanor, the way his voice went flat. They had every right to be worried. Adam _wasn’t_ fine with it, after all. He wanted to warn people, wanted to get the place shut down. He just couldn’t handle this right now. His head was still swimming with the rush of escaping Handeemen HQ, he couldn’t figure out what the right answer was. 

And Cassandra had a point. College students, as a collective, were dumb and impulsive. They were more likely to go after a particularly interesting stick than they were to chase a carrot.

Cassandra nodded, turning her attention back to the screen.

“I can finish up getting this ready for print,” she said. “You should go home. You look like shit, man.”

“Gee, I wonder why,” Adam said, opening the door from the interview room.

Outside, a trio of copy editors were gathered around the girl that was maybe named June that he’d talked to on the way in, who was telling them all something with a hushed voice. She fell silent as soon as she saw Adam, and the other three students turned to look at him with varying degrees of surprise, all less shocked to see him than the first copy editor had been.

Great. People were already talking. 

“See you guys next week,” Adam said to the gathered copy editors, opting to just leave rather than attempt to deal with the situation that was developing and walking towards the door.

“You’re here _every week?_ ” Scout asked. “What, does Cassandra send you into spooky abandoned buildings that often?”

“Nah, this was a special case,” Adam said, pushing open the door to leave the office. “I’m just here to drop off a story, most weeks.”

“Good. I think I’ve seen about enough of this place,” Scout said. “Where are we going next, then?”

“Home,” Adam answered.


	4. Home Bittersweet Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adam and Scout head back to Adam's dorm. They both could use some time to unwind after the hectic past few hours, but will they get it?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm gonna give y'all a little gore/body horror warning for this chapter. Nothing *too* bad, especially for Hello Puppets, just wanted to give a heads up. Enjoy!

Adam’s dorm building was, thankfully, pretty close to campus. It took all of five minutes to drive there from the newspaper office, which was good, because Adam wasn’t sure how much more one-handed driving he was up for right now. At least Scout had stopped clinging to the grab handle for dear life on this trip.

The run-down brick building Adam parked at didn’t look like much, but after Handeemen HQ, it was a sight for sore eyes.

Adam fumbled a bit with his ID card at the door—he usually swiped it with the hand Scout was on—but eventually got into the building, up the stairs, and into his room.

The dorm room looked just how Adam had left it: way too small, with beat-up furniture shoved under lofted beds, weird stains on the carpet, and various oversized papers for his roommate Tyler’s latest project strewn all over. Thankfully, Tyler himself didn’t seem to be here at the moment. Adam would have to explain his absence, and everything about Scout, to the other boy eventually, but he had done enough explaining for the time being.

He clicked the overhead lights on and gave a dramatic sweep over the room with his free hand.

“Welcome to my humble abode,” he said.

“Humble is right,” Scout said. “Geez, and I thought Handeemen HQ was a mess.”

“Ouch, oof. We’re making an attempt, Scout. You should see Cassandra’s dorm sometime.”

“What’s she got in there, a billion back issues of the paper?” Scout asked.

“Well, yes… but also a lot of garbage,” Adam said. “I’m pretty sure she doesn’t even have a trash can. Or a laundry basket.” 

Adam flopped down on his desk chair, propping up the arm that Scout was attached to on his desk while the puppet looked around the room. He hadn’t really had much chance to inspect the stitches holding the puppet to his arm yet, and hey, no time like the present.

Like the stitches on his mouth, the ones on his arm were a bit haphazard and caked with blood, although there were fewer of them. They didn’t particularly hurt, but a good chunk of the arm Scout was attached to was numb. He could still feel (and move) his shoulder and elbow, but not much below that, not even the stitches.

That was a good sign that taking the stitches out wouldn’t hurt too badly, but _not_ a good sign for what would happen after that.

“So... what happens if I take you off my arm?” Adam asked.

“Geez, getting right to it, huh?” Scout said. “I’ve _never_ had a host that was still awake like you, so maybe something’s different about this whole situation, but usually… well, puppets need hosts for a reason. If we go too long without a host, we go kind of… comatose. Dead to the world until we get a new one.”

“And how long is too long without a host?” Adam asked.

“That depends on the puppet,” Scout said. “Someone like Riley or Mortimer might make it a few days; they’ve had time to build up a backlog of energy from all their hosts. I’m guessing you’re asking about _me_ specifically, though, so: a few hours. _Maybe_ a day, but I doubt it.”

Adam winced at the very idea. Scout had already come so close to dying when their arm was torn, he wasn’t sure he could handle seeing them lifeless and limp.

Still, even with that horrifying image fresh in his mind… he couldn’t really imagine having the puppet sewed onto his hand for the rest of his life. 

“Can I at least cut the stitches, or do you need those?” he asked.

“Cut them if you want,” Scout said. “They’re just a precaution Riley started putting on to make sure puppets didn’t accidentally fling themselves off their hosts. I don’t _actually_ need to be sewn to your arm for this whole thing to work.”

 _Finally,_ an answer he actually wanted to hear. Adam grabbed a pair of scissors from his desk and carefully snipped through the stitches around his arm. Sure enough, Scout didn’t seem at all hurt or weakened by the action, and just watched as Adam cut around the base of their body, careful not to catch the edges of their T-shirt. 

There wasn’t any big change once the stitches were cut. Adam’s arm was still numb, and Scout was still animate, watching him with what he was fairly certain was boredom.

Well, that was that, then. The last majorly horrifying development from Handeemen HQ was taken care of, and it was no big deal.

“Do you mind if— can I—?” Adam asked, almost afraid to actually voice the question but reaching his free hand toward Scout nonetheless. Scout scoffed and rolled their eyes, looking away from Adam as they did.

“Not like I can stop you,” Scout said, and okay, that wasn’t really a _yes_ , and they would have a conversation about Scout’s obvious discomfort with being taken off of Adam’s hand later, but right now Adam was dying to have both hands free for the first time in ages, so he pushed past the puppet’s brusque manner and gently lifted them off his hand, setting them down on the desk. Scout shuffled to find a comfortable position amidst the clutter on Adam’s desk, and the hand they had been attached to began to prick with pins and needles as the feeling came back into it. Adam experimentally unclenched his fist, then flexed the fingers on that hand, watching as they responded to his command again, a little jerkily at first but fast approaching normal. 

Adam let out a sigh that had been building for God only knows how long. He’d needed to get used to doing things one-handed, and fast, in Handeemen HQ, but much of the building had been designed around hosts holding puppets. The world outside… not so much. He’d managed driving well enough, and the locked doors he’d encountered, but there were some things that wouldn’t really be feasible while hosting a sentient hand puppet.

Speaking of which...

“I have to do something,” Adam said, standing up with enough force to knock his chair backwards and smacking his head on the underside of his loft bed. He and Scout both winced at the collision, but Adam shook it off and ducked out from underneath the bed.

“Wait, Adam—“ Scout said, reaching out towards him, and Adam offered them a smile. 

“Don’t worry, it’ll be quick,” he said, turning to grab a couple things off of his dresser.

“Adam, you better not be running off _now_ after everything,” Scout glared.

“I’ll be back, I promise,” Adam said. “I just need to do this one thing, okay?”

And with that, he slipped out into the hall before Scout could protest further. 

* * *

Adam wasn’t exactly _shy,_ but there were some things that pretty much no sane person would want an audience for, and showering was one of them. Not to mention, Adam wasn’t sure how water-resistant Scout was. The closest they’d come to getting wet in Handeemen HQ was in the room filled with steam, and Scout had never been in the steam for very long, complaining vehemently whenever Adam’s arm dropped enough to dip them into it. 

So Adam made his way down the hall to the communal bathrooms alone, with just his towel and shower caddy. He probably should have told Scout what he was doing, he realized, but he’d been so excited at the prospect of getting to wash off the dried blood still caked on his face and arm and the assorted dust and grime from the abandoned building, and he _really_ didn’t want to have to explain the process of taking a shower in more detail if they weren’t already familiar with it. They’d forgive him for it, eventually. He hoped.

Due to the fact it was early afternoon, there was no one else using the men’s showers in the dorm. He had his pick of shower stalls, and immediately headed for the one in the back corner, which had the least leaky showerhead. He locked the door to the stall, set his stuff down on the shelf, turned the faucet to begin blasting out warm water, and peeled off the clothes he’d been wearing for the past three days.

The warm water was a godsend, cleansing and comforting after hours of stress and fear. The press of water was already chasing the worst of it off of him, sending dust and little bits of fabric and even a few loose stitches down the drain. Adam pulled at the remaining stitches on his face and around his arm, pulling out the cut threads and letting the water carry them away. 

Adam turned to get some actual soap from where he’d left it on the shelf and froze.

He had known about the stitches on his arm and across his mouth. They were fucked up, sure, but what about Handeemen HQ wasn’t? At least he’d known to expect them.

As it turned out, they weren’t the only stitches. Not by a long shot.

Adam stood frozen in place, shower forgotten, staring down at the haphazardly-sewn line of stitches holding shut the autopsy incision scored across his chest. 

Part of him—a large part—wanted to pull the stitches out then and there. He was out of Handeemen HQ, he wanted to be _done_ with all of this!

But unlike the stitches on his arm and his mouth, these weren’t there just sewn on top of perfectly good skin. Underneath them, he could see the incision that they were straining to hold shut, far deeper than just the top few layers of skin. If he cut the stitches now, he had no doubt that his chest would split apart. 

God, what the fuck had Riley _done_ to him?

The urge to pull open the stitches returned, stronger than before, because he _needed_ to know what was in there, what Riley had messed with when she’d cut him open. It was a bad idea, he knew it, he _knew_ it, and that was all that kept his hands away from the thread of the stitches, grabbing for his shampoo instead. But the thought kept scratching at the back of his mind, new and awful ideas of what could be underneath that line of stitches presenting themselves one after another as Adam tried to hurry through washing himself off.

He’d seen Riley’s puppet surgery setup, with the plush organs nestled inside the poor puppet’s body cavity. Riley had to have learned how those organs were supposed to be placed from somewhere. Had she pulled him to pieces bit by bit for curiosity’s sake, and stuffed everything back inside at the end? Had she tampered with his organs somehow? Taken something out? Put something new inside of him? Filled him with stuffing? Left him hollow?

It all seemed impossible, but so were living puppets.

Vaguely, Adam was aware that he was having a panic attack, struggling for breath underneath the stream of water from the shower. He reached forward and shut the faucet off. He was getting nowhere, not in this state. He needed answers, and there was only one puppet he could ask.

He pulled his towel around his waist numbly, not even bothering to properly dry off first, and picked up his things by habit more than any conscious thought. He left wet puddles of dripping shower-water on the floor as he walked back to his room, he knew, but he couldn’t bring himself to care.

Scout was still on the desk when he opened the door, idly flipping through one of the books that Adam had left there. They turned to look up at him as he entered, pleasant shock spreading across their face before they took in the full picture. 

The door slammed shut behind Adam.

“What the hell did Riley do to me, Scout?” he asked. His voice shook with the effort of keeping himself enough in one piece to be coherent at all. 

“I’m… not really sure,” Scout admitted,their remaining hand fidgeting with the edge of their shirt. “Riley never let anyone else stay in the room while she worked on hosts; she said they’d just get in the way. And, well, I’d never had a host for very long before you, not long enough to really figure it out. But… back when you first woke up, when I said you were supposed to be a zombie… I didn’t choose that word at random.”

Adam sat down on his desk chair, hard. Scout bristled at the sudden jolt, but kept talking anyway.

“When we first came alive, no one especially wanted to spend their time making their host eat, or sleep, or any of that junk, Riley least of all. So she started… _experimenting._ Trying to find a way to make it so that hosts… didn’t need any of that. And, well, she found _something._ Whatever she did to the hosts made it so that they could run off their own accumulated life energy, like puppets. They didn’t get hungry, or tired, or anything like that. But… it made them burn out faster, too.”

“How fast?” Adam asked. 

“A couple months, usually,” Scout said. “It varies from host to host and puppet to puppet. I’ve never exactly had the chance to run a host into the ground to know how long it would take me.”

“A couple months…” Adam said, trying to wrap his head around it. He was still a junior in college, he wasn’t going to get to _graduate_ , wasn’t going to become a teacher like he’d always wanted, wasn’t going to ever move out of this stupid town. And once he was gone, Scout was going to wind up comatose, too. They’d escaped Handeemen HQ, but they’d only delayed the inevitable. 

And then a noise cut through the silence of the dorm room, a low growling sort of noise. Adam and Scout both froze, waiting to see what the source was. It came again, and Adam just about collapsed onto the floor. It was his _stomach._

“What was that about not getting hungry?” he asked, turning to Scout, who still looked pretty confused. 

“I-I don’t get it,” the puppet said, cocking their head to the side. “I’ve never heard of a host getting hungry after Riley fixed them… but I’ve also never heard of a host still awake with a puppet on.” They turned to look at him, their eyes wide and hopeful. 

“So ‘a couple months’ might not be accurate?” Adam asked.

“If you’re still eating and sleeping and doing all that shit, I don’t see why it would apply,” Scout said. “That timespan is only a thing because hosts burn through their energy reserves. If you’re still making new energy, you _should_ be fine.”

Adam whooped and jumped up from his seat, once again whacking his head on the underside of his lofted bed. He couldn’t bring himself to care, though. He’d never felt so _relieved_ to be hungry. 

Of course, because he couldn’t catch a break, it was at that moment that the door unlocked and Tyler walked in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I said this in the notes for my other ongoing fic, but I'll put it here too: I'm working from home throughout the whole coronavirus thing, so I don't have much extra free time to write, and updates won't come any faster than normal. They may actually come a little slower because I've been sorta stressed out, but I'm trying to keep them coming anyway.  
> Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed this chapter! Let me know what you thought of it, I love comments!


	5. Everyone's a Skeptic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adam's roommate Tyler meets Scout

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay on this one, I re-wrote Tyler's reaction to Scout like 3 times.   
> I also didn't edit this chapter as rigorously as I normally do so I apologize if the quality isn't quite up to par  
> Anyway, Black Lives Matter, Trans Rights are Human Rights, and I hope you enjoy!

For a moment, Tyler just stood there, staring at Adam. Then the door to the room slammed shut behind him, and he started talking.

“Adam, what the fuck happened?” Tyler asked. “You didn’t come back to the room for like three days, and—are those stitches?”

Ah. Right. Tyler didn’t seem to have noticed Scout yet, which was probably for the best, but Adam was still walking around the room in nothing but a towel, with what Riley had done to his chest on full display.

Adam paused for a moment, trying to think of some way to ease Tyler into this, or maybe a convincing lie he could tell, but nothing came to mind. Might as well rip the metaphorical band-aid off, then.

“So…. I  _ kinda  _ got kidnapped,” Adam said.

“ _Kidnapped?_ ” Tyler asked. “That explains where you went, but not the fucking stitches. Did they steal your kidneys or something?”

“Y’know, I’m not really sure  _ what _ Riley did in there,” Adam said, looking down at the stitches that snaked across his torso. “I guess she might have pulled out a kidney while she was in there, who knows? My stomach’s definitely still in there, though.”

At that, Adam’s stomach growled again, and he walked back over to his dresser and started pulling some clothes out. He definitely wasn’t going to be let into the dining hall wearing nothing but a towel, after all. Despite his obvious frustration, Tyler turned to face the wall to offer some semblance of privacy as Adam started pulling on some proper clothes. He didn’t stop asking questions, though.

“...are you messing with me right now?” Tyler asked. “Because you are  _ way _ too nonchalant about being kidnapped and having your kidney stolen.”

“Dude, I’ve spent most of the past day running from killer puppets, ten minutes ago I thought I was gonna die, and two minutes ago I found out I wasn’t,” Adam said. “That has pretty well exhausted my supply of fucks to give.”

Scout snorted out a half-contained laugh at that, and Tyler snapped to attention, looking around the room for the source of the noise. Well, if Tyler already thought Adam was crazy, it wasn’t like he had anything to lose.

“Oh, Tyler, I want to introduce you to someone,” Adam said, walking back over to his desk. He picked Scout up from where they’d been watching the whole encounter and slipped them back onto his now-dry arm. His hand and forearm went numb in moments, and he turned to face a very confused Tyler.

“This is Scout,” Adam said, turning around so that Tyler could see the puppet. “They’re going to be our new roommate, I guess?”

Tyler just stood there for a moment, looking between Adam and Scout.

“Adam, I think you need to go to the hospital,” Tyler said. “I’m pretty sure you’ve got brain damage or something.”

“That would probably be a good idea,” Adam admitted. “I want to get something to eat first, though.”

“Oh my God, Adam,  _ please _ do not put off going to the E.R. just to eat shitty dining hall food,” Tyler whined, burying his head in his hands.

“Well, I’m very confused about what’s going on,” Scout chimed in. “Was waking up in HQ this confusing for you, Adam?”

“Eh, probably a bit worse,” Adam said. “I couldn’t ask any questions, what with having my mouth sewn shut and everything.”

Tyler had removed his head from his hands to gawk at Adam and Scout’s conversation.

“I can’t believe I’m sharing a room with a crazy puppet person…” Tyler moaned.

“Hey, who are you calling crazy?” Scout demanded.

“Adam,  _ please _ don’t talk to me through the puppet,” Tyler said. “Listen, I’ll drive you to the hospital if you want, but you  _ gotta  _ get some help.”

“Hey, I’m not that good at doing voices,” Adam said. “And I’m not gonna stop Scout from saying what they want to.”

“You couldn’t if you wanted to!” Scout said.

“He finally grows a backbone, but only when he’s got a fucking puppet on his hand… just my luck…” Tyler muttered.

Scout glared at Tyler, but let Adam speak up first.

“I guess I can’t make you believe me,” Adam said. “That’s fine. We’re going to the dining hall now.”

“Oh, absolutely not,” Tyler said. “You’re gonna pass out, or disappear off the face of the Earth again.”

“I wasn’t asking your permission, you know,” Adam said. He pulled on his shoes and grabbed his student ID card and phone, ignoring Tyler’s protests all the while.

“Fine. If you’re going to be that stubborn about it, I’m gonna come with you,” Tyler said. 

“What, not worried about being seen hanging around the ‘crazy puppet person’?” Scout asked.

“Ugh, I'm gonna regret this,” Tyler said, grabbing his own handful of useful items. “But someone’s gotta make sure you don’t get fucking  _ kidnapped _ again, it seems.”

* * *

The walk over to the dining hall was awkward, with Tyler refusing to make any conversation other than trying to convince Adam to go to the hospital. Adam did get the chance to explain to Scout what the hospital was, and as soon as the puppet heard that the place bore the slightest resemblance to Riley’s lab, they were adamantly opposed to going.

The dining hall wasn’t as crowded as it was during the week, and while Adam and Scout got some strange looks as they swiped in, no one really seemed all that concerned about the puppet. Tyler, for his part, seemed to be trying to ignore Scout’s presence entirely at this point.

Adam couldn’t entirely blame him. The whole thing sounded wild, he’d already been over that with Cassandra. He couldn’t expect  _ everyone _ to just accept the existence of living puppets right off the bat. Assuming that Adam had snapped and taken to carrying around a puppet was a lot easier to believe, that was for sure.

But it was still  _ annoying _ that Tyler wasn’t taking him seriously. Now he knew how Anthony Pierson had felt, and it wasn’t good. It would certainly be  _ easier  _ to just pretend that none of it had ever happened, to keep Scout’s existence a secret and act like the story that the paper would be publishing was the whole truth.

But when he turned to look at Scout and saw them staring wide-eyed at the dining hall, drinking in the sight of the plain, cafeteria-like room as if it was one of the coolest things they’d ever seen, he knew he couldn’t. Scout was the only reason he’d made it back out of Handeemen HQ again; they deserved to experience the world outside as much as Adam did. If that meant Adam was going to get some strange looks and skepticism, well, better than being eaten alive by Rosco.

Loading up a tray of food one-handed was easier than he’d thought it would be, but Tyler trailed right behind him anyway, ready to step in at a moment’s notice. Tyler’s behavior was definitely drawing more attention than Scout, who was still quietly examining the place, but he didn’t let up until Adam was sitting down at a table. Tyler took the seat across from him, watching him like he was going to pass out any moment.

That was probably a fair assumption for anyone with drastic chest wounds when voodoo  _ wasn’t _ involved, but Adam felt fine! In fact he felt perfect, without a single complaint. He… he didn’t feel hungry anymore.

“Hey, Scout? We may have a problem,” he said.

“A problem?” Scout asked.

“It seems that uh… my appetite is gone again,” Adam said.

“That’s not good,” Scout said.

“No shit. Got any idea how to fix it?”

“Maybe take the fucking puppet off?” Tyler suggested.

“Yeah, and go to the hospital too, right?” Adam said.

“Dude, I  _ heard _ your stomach before you put that thing on,” Tyler said. “Maybe you’ve got some kind of mental block about eating with a puppet on your hand?”

Adam looked down at Scout, who shrugged.

“It’s not like it’d hurt to try,” Scout said. 

Adam pulled Scout off his hand and set them on the table. As he worked the pins and needles out of the hand Scout had been on, Scout settled themself on the table, trying to find a comfortable way to sit.

Tyler jumped backwards, the legs of his chair screeching against the linoleum as he forced himself away from the table. He didn’t seem to notice the scattered glares the noise got, though, eyes locked on Scout.

“Uh, Adam?  _ It’s still moving! _ ” Tyler hissed.

“First, Scout isn’t an  _ it _ , don’t be rude. Second, yeah, they’ve been moving themselves the whole time,” Adam said. “Glad you’re caught up now.”

“Wait… the whole time? So that wasn’t just you talking to yourself?” Tyler asked.

“I don’t think he’s  _ that _ crazy,” Scout said.

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Adam said. 

As the feeling came back into Adam’s arm, it also seemed to reach the rest of his body, and the hunger from before returned,  _ loudly _ . 

“Oh, hey, it looks like your idea worked after all, Tyler!” Adam said.

Tyler did  _ not _ look at all pleased with the thought.

* * *

Once Tyler was convinced that Scout was actually a living, sentient puppet, it was a lot easier to convince him that Adam really didn’t need to go to the hospital, in large part due to the fact that he seemed to be in shock. He made some excuse about working on a group project and wandered out of the dining hall to God-knew-where. He sure wasn’t in their dorm room when Adam and Scout got back. 

It was probably fine. You were supposed to give people some time and space after giving them big news, Adam was pretty sure, and “living puppets are real” was  _ pretty big news _ . Besides, it wasn’t like he minded the quiet. After the day he’d had, it was actually welcome.

But the day wasn’t quite over yet. On the walk back from the cafeteria, Adam had noticed that the haphazard stitches he’d used to close up Scout’s arm were already starting to loosen. He didn’t really have a lot of sewing supplies sitting around the dorm, but he could at least get their wound more securely shut. He found the needle and thread he kept around for emergency patch jobs in the bottom drawer of his desk and pulled them out.

“Hey, Adam? What’re you doing?” Scout asked.

Oh, right. His mouth wasn’t sewn shut anymore, and he should probably try to explain himself.

“I’m gonna fix up the stitches on your arm, if that’s okay,” Adam said. 

“I mean, you already sewed me up  _ once _ today,” Scout said.

“Yeah, but the stitches are coming loose. I don’t want the seam to totally reopen,” Adam said. 

Scout looked a bit nauseous at the idea. “Good point,” they choked out. “You do that, then.”

Adam lifted Scout off of his hand and set them on the desk so he could have both hands free to sew with this time. While Scout watched, he cut a length of thread from the spool and tied a knot at the end, so it wouldn’t be hanging loose like his earlier, more haphazard attempt.

“Uh… sorry if this hurts,” Adam said. 

“Whatever, let’s just get it over with,” Scout said.

One thing was for sure: sewing with two hands was a lot faster, easier, and neater than trying to sew with just one. It took only a couple minutes to get the end of Scout’s arm securely sewed up and tied off. The white thread stuck out against Scout’s felt, but it did the job of closing the tear up.

“We can try to get some thread that matches next weekend,” Adam said. “Maybe some fabric, too, and try to make a replacement arm? I’m not great at sewing, so I can’t guarantee it’d go great, but we can give it a shot if you want.”

Scout just looked up at him for a moment, scrutinizing him.

“Hey, Adam?” they asked. “Why are you doing this?”

“What do you mean?” Adam said.

“ _ This! _ ” Scout said, waving about their newly-sewed-up arm. “Or, offering to try and replace my arm, and acting like you’re going to keep me around. It’s just… you’re not a zombie after all! At least, you’re not when you’re not hosting me. And that’s a good thing, really. It’s just, gah! It would be  _ so _ much easier for you if you didn’t have to balance your time between having your organs work and keeping me awake, and it’s only a matter of time before you  _ realize _ that, and where does that leave me, huh? Did we  _ really _ go through all that just for me to die out here instead of in there?”

“Whoah, whoah, whoah,” Adam said. “Who said anything about you dying? Is your arm—“

“My arm’s fine now,” Scout said. “But sooner or later, you’re going to get tired of this fucking juggling act, and need to drop one of the balls, and my money is on the ‘creepy voodoo puppet’ ball being the first to go.”

“Hey, I was right there with you through everything,” Adam said. “I didn’t run through that maze with Rosco and pull apart puppet guts and sew up your arm just to  _ abandon you _ . I’m not gonna lie, this is probably going to be a bit tough before I get used to it, but it’s leagues above Handeemen HQ and it’s way better than you dying,” Adam said.

“You mean that?” Scout asked. 

“Of course,” Adam said. “You had my back, now it’s my time to have yours.”

“I mean, technically I have your arm, not your back,” Scout said. 

Adam couldn’t help it. After the absolutely insane day he’d been having, he desperately needed some levity, and he started cracking up.

“Geez, don’t choke or anything,” Scout said, peering into his face to make sure he was okay, but they were smiling too. 


	6. Tricks and Treats

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adam returns to classes

After the absolute nightmare that Handeemen HQ had been, and then the messy aftermath of everything that had happened there, Adam was actually looking forward to getting back into the regular swing of classes. Even the driest of textbooks wasn’t half as intimidating as Rosco, and it was nice to be able to just sit and read for a while without needing to keep checking over his shoulder for sock puppets.

Of course, given that he’d missed several days of classes, he had quite a bit of work to do before things went back to normal. He’d been caught up on his readings when he’d left for the assignment, but now he was a few days behind. He was just lucky no major projects had been due during that time.

Scout grumbled while Adam spent all of Sunday frantically paging through books and taking notes, but they didn’t actually seem to be too upset. They’d only ever known the chaotic and dangerous halls of Handeemen HQ, though. Boredom was probably as much of a new experience for them as everything else out here was.

Adam was halfway through an incredibly long chapter on the evolution of the textile industry when he pushed back from his desk for a break.

“You think my History professor will take ‘I got kidnapped by puppets’ as an excuse for missing her quiz on Friday?” Adam wondered, idly clicking his pen. 

“Well, judging by everyone else’s reactions to the idea of living puppets, I’d say  _ hell no! _ ” Scout said. 

“Worth a try, though,” Adam mused. “And I’d have you there to back me up.”

“You’re seriously gonna take me to class with you?” Scout said, their voice surprisingly genuine before they slipped back into their usual, more guarded tone. “Don’t expect me to help you cheat or anything!”

“Hey, no cheating needed; that’s what all the reading is for,” Adam said. “And of course I’m taking you to class with me—if that’s alright with you, anyway. If you really don’t want to go, we can try to make up the hosting time elsewhere, but I gotta sleep eventually.”

“No, no, classes will be… fine. I think. You know this Host world stuff better than I do,” Scout said.

“I think it’ll be fine,” Adam reassured them. “It’s not like  _ you’re  _ gonna be the one quizzed on stuff.”

The door to the room creaked open, and Adam turned to see Tyler in the doorway.

“Hey, you alright?” Adam asked. Tyler hadn’t come back to the room at all last night; Adam had unsuccessfully tried to wait up for him, and Scout said no one had even tried to come in overnight. 

Tyler’s eyes darted to Scout, who was fiddling with one of the magnets stuck to the metal frame of Adam’s bed.

“Shouldn’t I be asking  _ you _ that?” Tyler asked.

“That’s fair,” Adam said. 

Tyler crept into the room slowly, shooting looks at Scout every few steps he took like he was expecting the puppet to lunge for him. When that didn’t happen, he pulled open his desk drawer and started rifling through it, pulling out various items and tossing them into his backpack. 

“Tyler… are you scared of puppets?” Adam asked.

Tyler whirled around, face red with anger.

“I am not scared of  _ puppets! _ ” he stage-whispered. “Puppets are just toys! They don’t talk and move on their own. Whatever the hell is on your hand right now is  _ not  _ a puppet!”

“What the hell else would you call me?” Scout demanded.

“I don’t know!” Tyler shouted. “I don’t  _ know _ , and I don’t really want to find out! Whatever you are, you’re bad news, I can tell that much!”

“Tyler,  _ please  _ calm down,” Adam said.

“Calm down? There’s a fucking creepy fabric monster in my room and you want me to _ calm down? _ ”

“One: puppet. Cursed puppet, maybe, but Scout’s not a fucking  _ monster _ . Two, yes you should calm down, because if you keep yelling someone’s gonna come to see what’s up and then we’ll just have more people involved in this mess.”

“You know what? Good! Let’s get some more people involved!” Tyler shouted. “If I can’t convince you this is a bad situation on my own, maybe you need a second opinion, or a third or a tenth. Because right now, you’re acting like the guy that dies first in a horror movie!”

“Well, then, that’ll be your warning,” Adam said. “If I end up dying, you were right and can do whatever, but until then, can you at least  _ try  _ to be a little bit civil to Scout?”

In response, Tyler zipped his backpack closed, slung it over his shoulder, and stormed back out of the room. Adam let out a long sigh, pressing the palm of his free hand against his forehead. 

“You think he’s gonna report me to someone?” Scout asked nervously.

“I’m honestly not sure who he’d be reporting a living puppet to, and I don’t think he knows either,” Adam said. “If he figures that out and does tell someone about you, I guess we’ll have to deal with it. But I doubt it’ll happen. Tyler gets worked up like that, but he doesn’t usually do anything about whatever upsets him.”

“Yeah, ‘usually’ he doesn’t, really reassuring…” Scout said. 

“If  _ anyone  _ tries to mess with you, they’ll have to get through me first,” Adam reassured them. 

“What’re you gonna do, bore them to death with the contents of your textbook?” Scout asked. 

“Maybe,” Adam said. “For real though, I’m not about to just roll over and let anyone hurt you.”

“... Thanks,” Scout muttered. Adam smiled and turned back to his reading. 

* * *

Over the course of the weekend, Adam hadn’t really needed to be around a lot of people, and while Scout got some odd looks, no one was really paying them much attention. A fair number of students lived off-campus, and the dining hall was a lot less crowded on weekends.

Of course, that couldn’t last. Monday meant that Adam had to return to classes, which meant that Scout was also going to attend.

Thankfully, Monday also happened to be Halloween. 

Adam didn’t feel like driving the short distance to campus and trying to find a parking spot, so he walked from his dorm to his first class of the day. 

“Are you cold?” he asked Scout. “You’ve only got your T-shirt…”

“I’m fine,” Scout said. “I’m not worried about the  _ weather _ , Adam.”

“I know, I know, but that’s an easier fix,” Adam said. “Still, I don’t think you’ll get too many weird looks today.”

Scout eyed a student biking past, who was steering one-handed while their other hand was occupied keeping an oversized pirate hat on their head.

“You Hosts come up with some  _ weird _ stuff,” Scout said.

“Yeah, but this is a fun kind of weird,” Adam said. “Maybe next year we can dress up, too.”

“You think?” Scout asked, their voice unusually soft, as if they were actually entertaining the idea. “I don’t even know what kind of costume would work, though.”

“We’ve got the whole year to figure it out,” Adam said. 

They were getting closer to campus now, and the number of other students on the sidewalk was increasing. Not everyone was dressed up, of course, but no one really gave Adam and Scout a second look. A girl in a Pikachu onesie even shot them a thumbs-up.

Adam resisted the urge to say  _ ‘I told you so’ _ both because it would be obnoxious and because Scout seemed only marginally relieved by the fact that they were passing people in way more elaborate get-ups that were drawing absolutely no attention, but Scout seemed to get the idea anyway. 

“Yeah, yeah, I get it, I was worried over nothing,” Scout muttered.

Right. It had been overshadowed by all the mortal peril and zombie stuff, but the two of them had some kind of psychic link. Adam still wasn’t entirely sure how  _ that _ worked, but it was hardly his top priority right now. Maybe he could try to figure that out once he’d figured out what was going on with his life energy keeping Scout alive, and whatever Riley had done to his organs, but for now, he had a class to get to.

* * *

The World History classroom had maybe a dozen people inside when Adam and Scout entered, at least four of them wearing costumes. As Adam had predicted, none of them gave Adam and Scout a second look. 

Adam walked over to his usual seat, and was happy to see that Stacy, another writer for the paper, was already sitting in the row in front of him. She was one of the students wearing a costume (a patchwork dress and some “stitches” makeup to look like Sally from The Nightmare Before Christmas), and she was too busy texting to notice Adam sitting in the seat behind her.

Well, it  _ was  _ Halloween. A few tricks were in order, right? Adam shot Scout a look, and they grinned. 

Adam reached forward to tap Stacy’s arm with his free hand. At the same time, Scout leaned in beside Stacy’s head. Stacy turned to look towards Adam, but before she could say anything—

“Boo!” Scout shouted. Stacy jumped in her seat and shrieked. Adam and Scout both cracked up laughing.

“Adam! That’s not funny!” Stacy scowled.

“Sorry, but it kind of is,” Adam said. 

“Where have you been for the past few days, anyway? Cass was going  _ ballistic  _ trying to get ahold of you,” Stacy said. 

“Let’s just say that assignment she had me on didn’t go too well and leave it at that,” Adam said. He pulled Scout back up to the row where he was actually sitting, and Stacy caught sight of the puppet for the first time.

“Oh, got a thematic costume for it and everything?” Stacy asked. 

“Not exactly,” Adam said. “Stacy, this is Scout.”

Scout waved, and Stacy hesitantly waved back, shooting Adam a look that said  _ “what the fuck is going on here?” _

“To make a long story short, the ‘abandoned’ set of Mortimer’s Handeemen is a bit less abandoned than we thought,” Adam said. “But the only things still living there are a bunch of evil puppets that kidnap people and drain their life force.”

“Um… your story in the paper didn’t mention anything like that…” Stacy said.

“Would you have believed it if it did?” Adam asked.

“No,” Stacy said. “To be honest, I still don’t really believe you, but… I don’t know, you don’t seem like the type of person to lie about something like this.”

“Congratulations, you’re the first person to believe Adam right away,” Scout said.

Stacy eyed the puppet with obvious hesitance.

“So… are you one of those evil puppets?” she asked.

“The evil part’s debatable,” Scout said, making a so-so gesture with their hand.

Stacy turned to look at Adam, not exactly reassured by that.

“They’re not gonna hurt anyone,” Adam said.

“I’m gonna hold you to that,” Stacy said, pointing at Adam. “If your puppet friend kills me, I’m gonna haunt you.”

“That’s fair,” Adam said. “You wouldn’t happen to have the notes from Friday, would you?”

“Yeah, I’ve got them,” Stacy said, pulling a notebook out of her backpack and handing it up to Adam’s seat. 

“You’re a lifesaver, Stace,” Adam said. 

“I know,” Stacy smirked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I realized this chapter would have Halloween in it, I decided I might as well release it on Halloween itself. I hope this was (somewhat) worth the wait!  
> Stacy belongs to CreativeSkull and is the protagonist of her fanfic Outside. Go check it out if you haven't already!  
> I finally have something like an outline for this story. If all goes according to plan, there will be four more chapters, but this story is already twice as long as I thought it would be when I started, so there might be more than that in the end.  
> Happy Halloween!


End file.
